ConcertoNet.com
'The pliant and rapturous playing of the Philharmonia, the outstanding soloists, and Zander’s powerful and fresh reading make this an exciting release and a welcome addition to the catalogue.’
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BBC Music Magazine
'Orchestral quality is never in doubt...outstanding...'
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MusicWeb International
Recording of the Month: 'Zander and his players bring out Mahler's sardonic humour...which I've never heard delivered quite like this...a fantastic, keenly observed performance.'
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Benjamin Zander's
continuing exploration of Mahler's symphonies with the Philharmonia Orchestra
for Telarc was highly regarded on two fronts: first, for his practically
slavish devotion to the scores, and second, for his verbal commentaries, included
on a bonus CD in the package. But since 2009, when the Cleveland-based label
announced that they would stop producing their own recordings, Zander's Mahler
cycle went silent, apparently in a search for a label with comparable devotion
to audio quality.

With the Glasgow-based
Linn Records, the project is back in business, even if the continuity is less
than seamless. Zander's fidelity to Mahler's markings remains remarkable. So
too does he handle timbral contrasts supremely well, particularly in balancing
vocal soloists Miah Persson and Sarah Connolly within the overall texture. But
no one would confuse the sound quality here with Telarc's earlier releases.

Where Telarc's goal was
evidently to create a pure, immediate sound, this Mahler Second takes an
acoustical step backwards into the hall. Compared with Zander's earlier
recording of, say, Mahler's First (4/06) - recorded, as with this outing, at
the Watford Colosseum - Telarc's close-mic transparency is replaced with a
setting that carries the original resonance of the hall like so much extra
baggage. The opening cello lines lack rhythmic bite; elsewhere brass players
strain to be heard at all.

Whether the difference
was due to a variance of preferences between the labels or to differences
between the emotional character and musical requirements in the two works
themselves, it remains rather hard to hear these two recordings sequentially as
part of the same cycle. On the other hand, the move to Linn has no way hindered
Zander's verbal discourse - and in fact has arguable opened new possibilities.
By altering the format from a bonus CD to a free download on the Linn website,
Zander is no longer constrained by length. In fact, his talk, running at more
than 100 minutes, is longer than the symphony itself.